Southern Constellations

Overview

Southern Constellations is an NEA-funded initiative that advances Elsewhere’s commitment to local wisdom and regional participation in global contemporary conversations. The initiative builds an expanded network of experimental, interdisciplinary art practices to support collaboration across the region. Elsewhere will again be offering six paid fellowships for residencies to exceptional emerging and established artists whose practices are based in the Southeastern United States.

Artists selected for Southern Constellations Fellowships will participate in Elsewhere’s residency program with full creative support, travel stipends, room and board in the living museum, and a $1000 honorarium. 2015 Southern Constellations Fellows will be announced in March 2015.

Jina Valentine, an artist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill is the program’s consulting curator again this year. She is working alongside Production Curator, Jennie Carlisle, to design this years program. Valentine has a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and a MFA at Stanford University. She has had fellowships and residencies at the Santa Fe Art Institute, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL. Her work has been exhibited at the Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles and the Drawing Center in New York City, among others.

2014 – Year Two

In 2014 the consulting curator was Jina Valentine, an artist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She worked alongside Production Curator, Jennie Carlisle, to design this years program. Valentine has a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and a MFA at Stanford University. She has had fellowships and residencies at the Santa Fe Art Institute, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL. Her work has been exhibited at the Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles and the Drawing Center in New York City, among others.

2013 – Year One

The Consulting Curator for year one was Kinsey Katchka, an independent curator based in Raleigh, North Carolina who specializes in global contemporary arts and visual culture. Katchka was recently a Guest Curator at Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art for the production of the exhibition Lalla Essaydi: Revisions (2012). Other notable exhibitions include Far from Home (2008) and Julie Mehretu: City Sitings (2007-9), both for the North Carolina Museum of Art.

The 2013 program culminated with a convergence held at Elsewhere in November that raised questions about the nature and value of experimentation in the arts, as well as its formation within a Southern context. The convergence included a discussion and workshop lead by 2013 fellows Joey Orr (John Q), Melissa Vandenberg, and 2013 consulting curator Kinsey Katchka to reflect on the current constellation of southern artists.

SELECTION

Nomination + Selection

With Southern Constellations we are building an expanded network of experimental, interdisciplinary art practices. Constellations Fellows are selected through a robust nomination committee composed of over 30 curators, gallerists, collectors, university educators, and artists from across the South based on the sophistication of their practice and their potential contribution to the discourse on experimentality in the arts. Other criteria for selection includes: the types of projects that applicants are involved with, their means of working with materials and conceptual concerns, and their positionality vis-a-vis the South. Southern Constellations Fellows are exceptional artists aligned with Elsewhere’s core conceptual concerns: process orientation, collaboration, critical play, material density, temporality, participation, and the integration of art with everyday life.

In selecting Southern Constellations Fellows we aim for diversity in terms of geographic location, racial identity, and modes of art making.

Southern Constellations Convergence

News

Regional exhibitions, conferences, network gatherings, and publications serve as opportunities to share the work of Southern Constellations Fellows’ work and further program participation both regionally and nationally.

In 2014, the Southern Constellations program was featured at the 9/50 Summit, held at the Atlanta Contemporary in Georgia (June 20-22), at the Alliance for Artist Communities Conference (October 20-23), in Charleston, SC, and at Smith Gallery at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC (November).

Selections from Southern Constellations at Smith Gallery, November 2014.